hello my name is dr schlice eisenger and i am going to be talking to you about the basics of culture so to start for we're going to go over our learning objectives these are the things that i would like you to know by the time we end this lecture the first thing is that you should be able to describe culture so what culture is as well as its characteristics and its components understand the relationship between culture and socialization socialization is a concept that you learned about previously recognize the differences between values and beliefs distinguish between ethnocentrism and cultural relativism and be able to define subcultures and minority cultures so culture what is it we have all these different images here um and they all have something to do with culture it's likely a word that you've heard before hopefully you're in a class called communicating across cultures but maybe you haven't actually stopped to try and define it so just looking at these pictures i want you to pause and just kind of think about what types of things come to mind when someone says culture first thought about culture is it is something that everybody has um oftentimes people might not think of themselves as having a culture because it's so normal to them so when you were looking at those pictures you might have been thinking about other cultures but not necessarily thinking about your own kind of like how everyone thinks that someone else has an accent but they don't everyone has an accent everybody has culture to define culture it is a shared way of living interacting and perceiving reality it guides what we do and why we do it so it's kind of like a path and the lights on that path at once i'm trying to explain what culture is it's kind of like explaining what water is to a fish it's all-encompassing completely surrounds you and so it's really hard for you to imagine what it would be like outside of your own culture it's a blueprint that determines how we think feel and bathe in society and culture is the accepted and pattern weights of behavior that are necessary for people to live uh three key points about culture uh so characteristics culture is learned uh it's not something that you're just born having or born understanding you learn to be a part of your culture and we'll talk a little bit more about how you learn that later culture is universal in the sense that everyone in the world has a culture however not everyone shares the same culture and culture is fluid and dynamic that means that it's constantly changing um it's not stagnant it doesn't stay the same uh you're probably recognizing this already because we've had a major cultural shift as of late due to the current pandemic um and we've seen the dynamic nature of culture whereas before it was not normative to see people walking around in masks now it's not normal to see people walking around without masks even myself now when i'm watching something on television or looking at old pictures i have a slight cringe if i see a huge group of people together without social distancing um and so that speaks to the fluidity of our culture uh once the pandemic has passed that's gonna be another shift or a change that happens again um because culture is ever changing so some components of culture we have material culture and non-material culture so just take a moment and try and think about based off of those words what do you think makes up material culture what do you think makes up non-material culture what might those terms mean material culture would be a physical things that make up a culture um those things that you can see or experience uh so for one food is usually a big thing that i think about when i think of culture most people enjoy food we have all different types of food it's a small picture there but these are different types of food that are based in different types of culture we have chicken and waffles we have pita bread with different sauces we have fish and chips we have poutine um there's some fish and vegetables there and pizza which could be italian it could be american just depends on what that pizza looks like i guess and who made it next one that i have here listed in the material culture is clothing um so different cultures have different types of clothing and we can see that that ranges from informal wear what you wear around a college campus is going to differ from what you aware at formal ceremonies and then what your formal ceremonies differs depending on where you are or what your culture is we have language so language is interesting because it actually fits into both material culture and non-material culture and we'll talk about uh language a little bit more in a moment um but written language is a part of material culture um and then in that picture there's also sign language which isn't written but that is a material aspect of culture uh how we communicate and the ways that we communicate fits forward to the non-material category we have things like symbols um so your book talks a little bit more about symbols but symbols are things that represent something that they don't necessarily have a meaning for but based on that symbol you recognize what it means the symbols that i have here listed are flags so we have three different flags here just as an example um but those those flags are symbolic of the countries that they represent we have dance so styles of dance are a part of culture and that can be uh cultures as you go throughout the world but also cultures after you as you go throughout generations the types of dances that we do now are different than the types of dances that people in our own culture did a few decades ago and that speaks to the material or the dynamic and fluent nature of culture lastly i want to make note of this animation that i did you saw the little kangaroo bouncing in let's just replay that again because it was fun and i've put work into it another symbol national animals uh the us the national animal is the bald eagle i went with australia's national and animal which is the kangaroo but once again not necessarily something that uh means or has any necessary tie to that culture but we've given it that meaning and it therefore stands for that now when we go into non-material culture um i'm gonna use this iceberg analogy um so that actually kind of shows both but uh we have material culture here at the top which are the things that you can see so some of the examples we gave were here and then we have things that are below the surface and that speaks to the more non-material things uh so for example rules of conduct facial expressions body language what institutes appropriate space use touching non-verbal communication there's many things there that you can read through um but we have these unspoken rules and then unconscious rules so things that you've learned throughout your life as you've been shaped and molded into being a part of your culture so i said in the last slide that we were going to talk a little bit more about language how that fits into both the material and non-material areas this is a little bit more on how language physics is the non-material component of culture so it's important to recognize that language is shaped by culture but then culture also shapes language so your book talks about the superior warf hypothesis which you can read a little bit more about in the text but just to talk about it here uh understanding that language is the lens through which we perceive reality um however like culture language is fluid and dynamic so taking those things together if language is the lens through how we perceive reality it makes sense then that culture would shape our language but then language would also shape our culture uh one example there would be how we've begun using more gender neutral language as a way to create more equity in our society and equality um instead of using terms like fireman now we use terms such as firefighter because fire man was shaping our reality in the sense that people had the idea you could only fight fires if you weren't a man um for women to do that would be unusual um but with the term firefighter if we're using that to shape our reality that opens up the uh idea that it could be a person of any gender who is working in that field and we have lots of words like that such as mailman policeman um now we use mail carrier police officer etc um meanings of words change as well which once again speaks to the fluidity and dynamic nature of culture so examples include the word gay another example could be the word literally so a couple decades ago people used the word gay it was used it meant happy now it refers to people who are part of the lgbt community literally is one that's changed more recently which now if you like literally literally no longer means literally it means figuratively which makes no sense in my mind but once again uh it's how language changes um and culture changes if you look up literally in the dictionary there are two definitions now one means something that actually happened uh the other one is where literally is used as a way to emphasize something so when someone says i literally died when i saw her um obviously if they're telling the story they did not literally die but they're using that as a point of emphasis i know you have new words as our culture changes um so things like social media that was not a thing when i was a child um texting was also another thing when i was a child and i'm not that old um but these words have been added into our vocabularies and they shape our culture in a way that um like 20 years ago if you were to go back in time and say texting people wouldn't understand what you meant or what you were even talking about because the concept wasn't existing um slang i guess is another example of how language and culture change throughout time but this is a more material example rather than just like slang words changing or being used and not used it's actually concepts that have been created and invented and then the language that is there to meet them so we've already talked a bit about culture and socialization but going more into that as we said one of the key characteristics of culture is that culture is learned and that is through this process of socialization so you would have read about the cycle of socialization already and you learn that like you're socialized to basically fit into society and understand what your roles are um but just to break that down a little bit more as we're learning our culture we learn norms norms are codes of conduct rules a social guidebook basically uh you learn norms of how to interact with other people how to behave in school what constitutes good manners etc and all of those things are different across different cultures throughout the world so how you interact with people in the us might be different than how you interact with people in another country that could also change as you go regionally within the us or from state to state so we have norms versus sanctions sanctions are basically how you enforce the norms so the sanctions will be the consequences for breaking the norms and that would be how you learn to uh conform to the norms uh those consequences could include things as simple as correction so if you're with a child and they push you out of the way and say move you correct them and say no you should say excuse me and not push it could be reprimands which is a little more forceful uh punishment so if that child decides no i'm gonna say move and push you out of the way and i'm mad that you told me to say excuse me and i kick you they might go to timeout um that would be a punishment to teach them like that's not how we behave as civilized beings in our society um but then they also can occur through more social consequences those sanctions so ostracism or marginalization this happens a lot in schools uh if a student if a student or a child isn't acting appropriately to the norms of what other students consider to be cool they might be ostracized from a specific group of students where they don't get interacted with those students don't play with them or invite them to different events and so those are also or those are some social consequences or social sanctions that uh people can experience for not adhering to what the norms are in that certain situation through this process we also learn about our values um or what our values should be so ideas about what are what is good important or desirable our values are what we what should be or what we believe should be so one example of a value in the united states is equality everybody believes that everybody should be treated equally i won't say everybody most people believe that everybody should be treated equally that's generally considered a u.s value but then we compare that to beliefs so these are our ideas about what's actually real and true uh beliefs will be the way we think things are so what should be what and then what we think they actually are some people believe that everybody is treated equally so their value aligns with their belief um what should be is that everyone should be treated equally and their belief therefore is that everybody is treated equally because that might be what they've experienced other people believe that although they value equality that not everyone is treated equally and so that is their belief or the way that they think things are um and once again we are taught these values through our socialization and our beliefs occur uh are formed through our experiences uh one of the last things that i want to talk about based on or surrounding culture is ethnocentrism versus cultural relativism move myself out of the way for you so ethnocentrism is the belief that our culture is the natural way of being and other cultures do and believe things that are unnatural so this once again is coming from the encapsulating nature of culture like i said earlier explaining culture to a person is like trying to explain what water is to a fish we're so surrounded by our own culture that we have a tendency then to believe that what our culture is is what's natural and everyone else they're abnormal or doing it wrong and they should then conform to what we're doing um a more extreme form of ethnocentrism might be the belief that our culture is superior and that other cultures are deficient this either version of ethnocentrism leads us to judge other people using our own cultural lens and that's something that's natural to do because once again you've been socialized to behave and believe the things you behave the way you behave and believe the things you believe um and so that's what's normal to you um you've had those norms in green teeth into you through sanctions uh and so it becomes normal to look at other people through your own cultural lens or to judge events through your own cultural lens whereas culturalism would be uh rather than basing how you evaluate in the culture on your own culture you would use that culture standards for evaluating that culture that is a challenging thing to do it's something that has to be learned and practiced it's not our default and it does require a deep understanding of that other culture including socio-historical factors so if you don't understand the socio-historical factors behind someone's or group's behavior then you won't understand necessarily why they're behaving that way or why they're experiencing a certain hardship because you don't know what's led them to that point so a discussion on culture wouldn't be complete without a discussion on subcultures and minority cultures so i've talked a lot about or not a lot i've mentioned occasionally throughout this lecture the u.s culture what is that when i say the u.s culture i'm actually referring to what the dominant culture is in the us but because the us is such a hugely diverse place there are subcultures and minority cultures within that so soap culture would be a smaller culture that exists within a larger culture so we have the culture of the us within that we have a culture in indiana that's a subculture in indiana we have different cultures so we have cultures that are normal for college campuses things that you do in college aren't necessarily the same things that you are used to or doing in high school or once you graduate college so for example once you graduate college you likely won't be going to classes every day you'd have a job hopefully and your job is going to have a different culture than your university campus did and then even cultures between universities differ so we have cultural differences between being a student at purdue for example uh or being a student at iu one of those will give you a world-class educational experience the other one you'll just be all right um but subcultures uh are those different cultures that we have that um are smaller and they change throughout um so you could also have you can go even smaller to like a family unit your own specific family is a subculture uh that exists within the larger us culture or if you're from a different country your family culture is going to be different than your national culture then we have minority cultures which are cultures that differ from the larger or dominant culture so for example if you're part of an ethic or a religious minority then you have different cultural practices than those that are practiced by those in the dominant culture and when you're part of the minority culture the question comes up of whether we value in the u.s at least assimilation or multiculturalism so the idea of assimilation would be something that was practiced heavily during the large-scale immigration that happened around the turn of the century in the early 1900s where people would come over to the u.s from mostly europe and they would change their name to be more american uh they would usually stop speaking their native language or not teach their native language to their children and their children would only learn english because that's what it meant to be a part of the us they were assimilating so they were cutting off their former cultural ties and assimilating into the dominant culture there are different levels of that where um you could for example acculturate not necessarily fully assimilate where you're kind of taking the best of both worlds so you're still keeping things that tie you to your own culture like say you don't for example change your name and you still speak your native language but then you also learn english and you practice u.s traditions in addition to your own uh so that would be something called acculturation um but then there's also different levels of assimilation in the sense that in the us particularly some groups aren't seen as being able to be assimilated into the dominant culture whether that be because of their skin culture or their skin color or their religion or something else about them that the dominant society has decided this group is going to never fully be like us um and so for some groups it's important to recognize that assimilation isn't even possible even if that's something that they want to do so we have assimilation but then there's also the idea of multiculturalism which would be more so focusing on maintaining those different cultures and celebrating them and creating equitable experiences for those different cultures to all be able to fit in without having to forsake what makes them or what makes their culture special or unique so that's going to be the route that this course is taking obviously as we're looking and learning about different cultures is how do we create a more multicultural society rather than one where people feel the necessity to assimilate if they're to be accepted uh so one of the last things we'll talk about are some cultural differences i mentioned the dominant culture uh in the u.s which is uh white protestant um or it's at least rooted from white protestantism white protestantism um so those are like the two major um identity categories or social identities that shaped the us dominant culture um or as the book phrases it mainstream anglo-american culture versus uh minority or yeah minority cultures so we have these different categories that they talk about about how these different groups um look at things so or look at the world individualism being one example versus group orientation so the mainstream culture in the us would be individualism there's values or self-reliance is valuable independence and autonomy individuals are in control of their environment etc whereas in a group orientation people put the group's interests ahead of individuals um the the or sorry independence and autonomy is seen as a rejection of the group uh higher being is responsible for a person's outcomes so there are differences between the mainstream minority cultures one that i wanted to highlight to talk about this time because that's one that i see create conflict quite a bit uh as far as whether you're on time or not is not just a matter of how punctual are you but it's a matter of values for some people so in the mainstream us culture time is important in the sense that rigid time schedules are followed time is viewed as a commodity um there's a future orientation so uh there's an idea of what am i doing next um i'm at this meeting and then i have to go here and then i have to go here and i must be prompt and punctual there's an underlying value there that says me being on time is me respecting the other person's time because time is seen as a commodity as stated here and so then if someone's late then there's the assumption based off of that value that if you're late that means that you're disrespecting my time because i see time as a commodity however it might not be a matter of respect or disrespect but rather a different view of time based off of culture so uh time for many minority cultures in the us uh schedules are loosely adhered to uh relationships are seen as more important than time and there is a stronger relationship between past present and future so rather than focusing on like i'm in this and i need to go to this next i need to go to this next the value is i'm going to value this relationship as my top priority so however long this takes is however long this takes because the relationship is more important than my next time commitment or my next meeting that's scheduled and then once this is finished we'll move on to the next one and however long that takes then i'll give myself fully to that meeting or that scheduled event um and so time is seen as more circular rather than step by step um there are more of these but i'm not going to go through them all however they are on page 75 and 76 in your textbook and you can discuss some of these more with your lab section and here are the discussion questions for you discuss in your labs your tas will facilitate this for you um whether you discuss all of them or just some of them will be up to your ta but i'm not going to read discussion questions to you because you'll have access to the powerpoint that's all that i have to say about culture so thank you for your time and um i hope that you have a better understanding now of not only what culture is but how it shapes the way that you view the world as well as how it shapes the way that other people view the world why that's important knowledge for you in really navigating through life you